Another week gone by....

Heyyyyooooo!

Well! First off: starshine moonbeam is back from the dead!!!! Or, in other words, my bike is fixed. Did I already say that I named my bike starshine moonbeam? Anyway. It was actually a small miracle that it works, 'cause the part that the gear shifter thing attaches to was the thing that I needed, and when the bike guy called the parts people they only had ONE more part left!! Yuuuup! What a blessing. I'm way paranoid about it breaking again though, I think the bike is just cheap and poorly made. I have to be way careful not to bend it again!

Our house is infested with termites, so for the past few days some termite people have been showing up at our house and tearing the ceiling and molding off. It's pretty entertaining. Apparently they do gardens, too, 'cause we came home one day and all of the plants in our garden were gone.

This week we invited 3 of our investigators to be baptized, and all 3 accepted!! Yay!!! Ben I think actually accepted last week. She's doing AWESOME!!! She wants to go to church but is having a hard time going 'cause she has school until 1PM.... :( But she totally accepted the Sabbath Day and is going to stop working on Sundays and prepare food on Saturday to bring to school so she doesn't have to buy food on Sundays!! She's awesome. I know that if she keeps the Sabbath to the best of her abilities, the Lord will bless her even more and she will find a way to go to church. 

This is the kitty wad that we have to pass to get to the Land of Nephi.
I call it the kitty wad 'cause there always seems to be cats around it.
 I've always wanted to go inside, but wasn't sure if that was allowed.
 Last P-Day we asked if we could and they let us in!!!!
I drew and took pictures for a good hour and a half. :DD

The next dater is My Heart! We taught him about baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and he still knows that he can't feel the Holy Ghost if he works all day in a business with people drinking alcohol and smoking and gambling. We asked if he would be baptized, and he just sat there for a bit... thinking really hard! And then he looked at us and said: "Day. ...Day! DAY!!!" (Yes, yes, YES!!) When he was thinking he was trying to decide if he could really close the business in order to be baptized, 'cause he knows he has to change his life in order to be baptized and follow Christ!! SO AWESOME!! Too bad he has school until 1PM too. >:( 

The last is the girl we met at the Thai khanom activity who just reads the Book of Mormon like a boss! She's almost done with 2 Nephi already!!!! We've only taught her twice!! She wants to be baptized, but she ALSO has school on Sundays!!!!! GRRRR Thailand is way hard for church, 'cause it isn't a Christian country and so they literally have no concept of a weekend or setting aside a day of the week for rest. Wayyyyy annoying.

A Sister in my branch got her mission call!!!!! She's going to CANADA!!!!!! She went to school in America for a few years so she's wayyyyyyy good at English. She's amazing. She's taught with us a couple times before and she explains things WAY better than we do. She'll do great.

This week we discovered a park near Lek's house! It's so cool! Basically the paths are surrounded by water on each side and they're twisty and go over random tall hills and under bridges and there's big trees and a play structure- so awesome. Well, one day Sis Reedy and I were walking around, talking to random people, doin' what missionaries do when at one point Sis Reedy was like, "OH MY GOSH SIS THERE IS AN ALLIGATOR HERE." I was like, "WHAT?!" And whipped around. There wasn't an alligator, but there was a HUUUUUGE water monitor lizard!!! It was just tromping around this park! Turns out there's 5 or 6 of them that live there! ahahahha! They're a protected species or something... and they just hang out there! We asked someone of they were friendly, and he was like, "hahahhaha Nope."

We've had lots of fun at the park. We've fed catfish, played botchi ball with random dudes, watched some old guys play chess, play a Thai version of jump rope with some girls. Way fun! One time as we were leaving the park a crazy guy on a bike stopped next to us and was like, "I WANT A PRAKHAMPII (scriptures). I'M INTERESTED. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he was like, "Thanks! ......Bye!" And then took off. I hope he likes it!

No worries, just a giant wad
 in a neighborhood that an LA lives in.

We met another crazy lady near Ben's apartment. She speaks wayyyy good English, and keeps telling us she's a member. But every one says she's a compulsive liar, so we're not sure if we believe her... But there was one day that she came running up to us and she had a Liahona..... so now we're wayyyyyy confused! She harasses Ben and Brother Te who we take to go teach Ben. :S One time Ben left us at the spot we were teaching to go get Te and after a few minutes they came RUNNNNING in laughing hysterically!! I guess the lady was following Ben and when she found Te she just whispered "run" and they booked it away! hahahahah He felt SOOOO bad! And was pretty confused. haha Our district leader wants us to teach the lady.... 'cause I guess he taught and baptized a crazy lady once, and after she was baptized she turned normal??? My problem is that teaching crazy people is SCARY! You never know what they're gonna do! And she lives so close to us.... Errrhhhhhh Sketchy.

Yesterday was ridiculously hot. I do not even want to know how hot it was. All I know is that we ran out of water and we biked alllllllllllllll the way to Laksi and back TWICE. I about died. haha Today the weather is amazing! It's probably going to rain, but it's pretty cool! Yayyy. :)

Well, that's all I have for this week. Still doing great! Love Don Mueang! I don't want to leave. :(

Love

Sister Zaugg

Two months!

Dogs sitting in front of 7/11
 BTW For Thailand being OBSESSED with 7/11,
the date 7/11 passed pretty quietly...

The thing about serving in Thailand is that you have to be keenly aware of how long you've been here, 'cause eeeeeveryone and their gramma asks you about it! When I'm out contacting I basically have the same conversation like, 20 times. It usually goes something like this:

Me: "Hey! How are?"

Random Person: "Good...?"

Me: "What are you doing/have you been selling well today/how long have you lived here?"

Random Person: "-Response- Phuud Thai Geng (You speak Thai well).

Me: "Thanks! It's a blessing from God!"

Random Person: "How long have you been here?"

Me: "2 months."

Random Person: "WHAT?????"

Yup. Every time. And it usually ends like this: 

Random Person: "Thug sadsanaa tham hay thug khon be khon dii. (Every religion teaches us to be good, AKA I'm not interested).

Me: "OK, Byyye!"

Yup. haha

We're in taxis a looooot.

Anyway, this week was wonderfulllllll! The District Presidency has started a huge campaign to get the members motivated to work better, the leaders to work better, and the missionaries to work better in order to get out of this slump we're in. 

To put it in the words of one of my Zone Leaders: "We're so ridiculously close to being a stake it's disgusting."

And it's TRUE!!! We need something like, 30 more active Melchizedek Priesthood holders in the District before it becomes a stake. SOOOO CLOSE. Every one is getting training, leaders are pushing for more unity in the branches (ie focusing on visiting/home teaching and ward activities), missionaries are putting more emphasis on LA families that have Melchizedek Priesthood holders, etc. Great things are about to happen in Zion's Fist, and I'm excited to be a part of the work here!

Sister Reedy and I have really seemed to come out of a really tough place and are just seeing tons of miracles! We had 92 people at church yesterday!!!! From an average of 60 the whole time we've been here!! We have 7 investigators and are seeing some progression in our LAs that we work with. It's so amazing seeing the changes people are making in their lives. :)

 Taking the youth dan jonesing!
Also, that's one of my zone leaders
taking a really huge awkward step.

On Saturday there was a big youth activity for those who are thinking of being missionaries. We took them Dan Jonesing and they were GREAT!!! Totally fearless. All I really had to do was start the conversation (because that's always the scariest/ most awkward part) and ask some questions to make their message a little more relevant to the person- they did the rest!! We gave away 4 Book of Mormons and got 5 numbers. Thailand has got some great youth, I'm excited for them to be missionaries!

This week I ate some gross things. haha

Thing 1) I've been getting pretty sick of eating the same 6 dishes over and over again, so one day we went to our usual place and I just looked at the menu on the wall and just picked something random: "Pad nay kay." It ended up being a squid/chicken liver stir fry that was suuuuuper spicy. Mmmmmmmmm. I ate as much as I could, but I had to buy some chocolate afterwards to make me feel better. LOL Not doing that again.

Thing 2) One day we were biking home from a new investigator's house in an area that we hadn't really explored yet. We passed this gui diaw (it's like fancy top ramen) place that had some nice looking people there. After a couple minutes Sis Reedy slammed on the brakes and was like, "WE GOTTA GO BACK!" So we went back and talked to them for a bit. Turns out they'd just opened their ran and the lady and son are from burma, but the dad is from Thailand... we're actually not sure if they're a family or not.... ANYWAY, they were tooootally not interested, so we left, but later Sis Reedy and I both talked about how when we talked to them we both felt strongly about them and that we needed to keep up with them. Sooooo, a few days later we were out visiting that investigator and were leaving to eat dinner. Sis Reedy was like, "Hey, let's eat at that gui diaw place." Well, turns out it's a FISH gui diaw place! I'm all for fish, but not when it comes from Bangkok. I've seen people fishing out of the khlong, and they do weird things with fish and I was nooooot happy about it. But Sis Reedy made us eat it so we could talk to the people there! Eughhhhh I really related to the quote: "What will you sacrifice to save the souls of others? What pains will you endure? What discomforts? Is their eternal salvation not more important than your temporal desires?" Yup. My temporal desires were not met that day. They were still not interested and actually pretty suspicious of us. I asked the guy why he decided to open the ran, and he was like, "What, are you gonna say that it was God that made me decide?" And I just laughed and was like, "Nooooo, I was just wondering!" hahahaha He was super confused. GOOD. We'll get them somehow.

 FOR THAILAND!! These two were so goooooood!

Hey, remember that picture I sent of the neighborhood built over the khlong? We have an LA that lives there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WENT THERE!! It was so cool! I'm for sure taking video and pictures next time I go, because I need to remember it for the rest of my life. Looove it! Her husband isn't a member. He used to be a monk, but now he's up to learning the Gospel so we're gonna be teaching him and their granddaughter! Whoop whoop!

Loved this cute garden outside of someone's house!

The other day we were getting ready to go out contacting and it just started POURING. I just looked at Sister Reedy and said, "Well, this is how the Elders found Sister Bu! Let's go!" So we went out in the rain to the Land of Nephi. We took cover in this lady's house/ran. We talked about life, and rain, and a bit about missionary work. She was like, "Yeah! Come back and hang out!" And Sis Reedy was like, "Can we come back and teach you?" And then she was like, "Ohhh.. well... you know, I'm so busyyyy." We were just like. :I Haha but then when I was about to get up, Sis Reedy was like, "I'm gonna teach her about prayer." Oookay! I asked the lady, "Hey, have you ever wanted to talk to God?" And she was like, "Yeah!" So we taught her about prayer, and she was way interested and said she'd do it! Sis Reedy and I sang on the way home. :)

 One of the girls I took dan jonesing,
she helped us teach MyHeart! She is amazing.
She's just over a year old in the church!
 Also! My hair and a skirt that an LA gave
to me that every one loves.

MyHeart is doing GREAT! He just loves coming to the church, everyone is friendly to him, he feels good, turns out one of the members in our ward is his friend from when they went to the same Baptist church! Whhaaaat? Yesterday we taught about repentance. We found out that he doesn't drink even though he sells it at his snooker ran. We were all like... "Can you get baptized if you sell alcohol.....? We're not sure!" I told him to ask God, and he was like, "I know the answer. It's no." So we read 1 Nephi 3:7, which he related to way well. We asked if he thought God would provide a way to help him stop selling alcohol, and he said, "Yeah, He will!" So we committed him to doing it and he said he would! This guy is SO READY. Sis Reedy and I can just see him being a missionary. All the missionaries in our zone were at the church 'cause we were having zone training and he was just there playing frisbee with them having a grande 'ol time. I'm so excited for him. :DDD

 Heheheh

Hmmmm... Well, my bike broke this week. :( I changed the gears and it just broke. I'm dropping off my bike at a bike shop today so hopefully that'll get worked out.....

Life is good in Don Mueang! As I get further into this transfer, the more I want to stay! This area is amazing. I want to stay here for a loooooong time! In the words of Sis Reedy: "Heaven on Earth in a weird way."

Love ya'll!

Sister Zaugg

 

Here I Begin Transfer 2 :)

(This is Sister Zaugg's letter from 7/15 that didn't go through last week)

Our house is falling apart, no big deal.

Helllloooooo! So this week marks the beginning of transfer two! Even though Sister Reedy and I are staying in Don Muang for this transfer, we were invited to the transfer meeting because transfers always take place at the Chaengwatthana building (where we have church). We were hoping to get some training on English class and sharing the Gospel through family history, but as it happened the English meeting started earlier than we expected so we missed most of it, and we had to leave for an appointment before the actual transfer meeting ended so we didn't even get to the other training. :( However, transfers was sooooo much fun! Transfers are 6 weeks long here. At the end of each transfer all the people who are told to come to transfers meeting pack up their stuff and come to Bangkok to get their new areas and companions (and packages!). Sister Ng and Elder Wahl were there!! But not because they're changing areas. Their trainers are dying! They've already finished their missions. I can't even imagine killing my trainer! That would be hard. Luckily Sister Reedy is still very young in the mission. :)

Anyway. Transfer meetings in Thailand are way fun. Pres Senior was really stressing having zone pride and having friendly competition between the zones, so my zone leaders asked me to make a logo for the zone that they could put on a flag. They made little flags for every one in the zone. We're called 'Zion's Fist'. : ) We all sat in ranks according to our Zones and then sectioned off into Districts and companionships. Whenever someone got called to serve in our zone one of the Elders would shout, "Hip hip!" And we would all yell, "Huzzah!!" and wave our flags. Also- somehow Elder Appleyard (zone leader) convinced SIster Sahagun to bake an apple pie. The zone leaders had it placed on a pedestal next to them with a fancy red cloth and stuck a flag in it. President Senior was really impressed. hahaha! He has been in country for 1 year now! We ate apple pie together to celebrate. :)

Anyway, it was way awesome to see my nccngs! I didn't get to talk to any of them cause we left early, but Sister Tilly is in my district! Sister Sahagun is training her!! Sister Sahagun JUST finished being trained and now SHE'S training! All of my nccngs are being trained by my Phiis, who have only been here for 12 weeks!!

I'm super scared now, because that means I might train in 6 weeks. o____o NOOOOOOOO. Ohhh boy. I mean.... I could proooobably do it, but there is a high likelihood that I would get myself and my greenie killed. Or lost. We most definitely would get lost. Eughhhhh

I try not to think about that.

So yeah! Transfers is just a big party. Pres Senior calls out the area, says, "Elder so-and-so!" - he pulls up a picture of that Elder - "You're serving with Elder so-and-so!" -pulls up another picture. And then the two elders run and give each other a big bear hug and run to their new zone while every one applauds. There wasn't a transfer meeting when I got here, so it was fun to go to this one!

Let's see... what else....

Earlier this week we had to leave our bikes in front of a Tesco Lotus (like a 7/11) over night, and when we went back the next morning to pick them up my helmet was ALLLLLL chewed up by a dog!!!!! I WAS SO MAD!!!! We took it to SIster Lek's house and disassembled it, and she sewed the straps together and then we reassembled it. It definitely isn't the same as before, but it works and I don't have to buy a new one!!! We were so grateful for Sis Lek. She always seems to be there to help our bike problems. :) But now I carry my helmet everywhere I go.

Wednesday was the best day ever!!! We had a great District Meeting the day before that was about using our agency to choose to be better missionaries and have more faith! Sister Reedy and I didn't talk about it together, but individually we just resolved to change and be more diligent. On Wednesday we were both praying for help and each other the whoooooole day! I was completely focused on the work the whole day, and we just felt like missionaries! We taught by the spirit, we saw the people we work with progress- God performed small miracles- it was amazing! We decided that it was possible to have every day be like that! And guess what! Thursday was just like the day before! It was AWESOME!! We were contacting in this area that we call the Land of Nephi. We call it that because we call our neighborhood that we live in Zarahemla, and in order to get to the Land of Nephi we have to bike through this road that is like.... super broken up and surrounded by tall grass and trash and dogs. We call it Desolation, herefore the land on the other side is called the Land of Nephi. :) Anyway.... we were contacting in the Land of Nephi, and getting rejected by every one! At the end we passed a house, that had two little poodles that like THREW themselves at the gate and were freaking out.... which happens at like every house that has a dog. We laughed and thought they were cute and kept walking, I was like, "Sorry doggies! We have to go find God's prepared people!" Sister Reedy laughed and then was like, "Wait.... what if that house has God's prepared people?" And I was like, "......OK." So we went back and talked to the lady who had just come out of here house. She was super happy to chat with us, she speaks English, and she made her daughter come out to talk to us so she could practice her English. They invited us in and we were trying to share the Book of Mormon, but the mom kept asking random questions that would take the discussion off track! Usually when that happens we just move on, cause they aren't interested, but that time we just kept pushing for some reason. The mom had to leave the room for a bit, and after she'd gone, the daughter turned to us and said, "Actually, I'm really interested in your message. My family is Buddhist but it doesn't do anything for us, there's no point to it. I want to know if Christianity would do anything for us, but I'm afraid to change and then have family relations be awkward only to find out Christianity doesn't have a point either!" So we taught her that there's a way to test Christianity out and about prayer and she is really sincere about learning about Christ! 

Miracles I tell ya. :,)

Unfortunately the rest of the week went... not so great. It seems like the adversary really picked up his pace. :( Mali basically told us that she can't change, but we realized that that's because she doesn't have a testimony of the Book of Mormon yet, so we need to repent and help her gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon and Christ. We aren't giving up yet.

We've been handed a curve ball right now now, but I know that if we push through it with faith, we'll see miracles!!

Love ya!

Sister Zaugg

My first transfer... OVER??

Whoa. I remember at the MTC after 6 weeks I'd felt like I'd been there for SOOO long, and I was so cool, because I was one of the seasoned older kids, but  in Thailand I still feel like a clueless greenie and that it's been just a blink of an eye!

As far as the language goes, I've seen a marginal improvement. Sometimes in contacting situations, Sis Reedy and I will split up and talk to different people (within sight and sound, of course), and I can usually hold up a conversation. It's pretty one sided though. I ask a question, they answer something I don't really understand. They ask a question that I try to make up an answer to that might be relevant. So far I haven't gotten TOO many weird looks. But I do understand more than I did 6 weeks ago! It's great. Maybe in a year and a half I'll speak Thai. :)

 A lot of our contacting looks like this!
Also, there's my bike.
I named it Starshine Moonbeam. :)

So this week at District Meeting my District Leader informed us that Pres Senior wants two hours of street contacting to be the priority of our schedules. We're supposed to schedule everything else around the contacting! I have to say, Sis Reedy and I have found a lot of success in doing this! It's really scary, and kind of makes me tired thinking about 2 hours of street contacting every day, especially since I'm not confident with just striking up a conversation with someone in Thai and then somehow relating it to Christ in a way that would touch them, but as Sis Reedy and I have hit the neighborhoods, marketplaces and other random places of Bangkok, we have seen an improvement in our Thai, our conversational abilities (ie: not being awkward farangs), sensitivity to the direction from the Spirit and abilities to bear our testimonies powerfully. We have met A LOT of people who are potential investigators. The stressful part is that we keep finding all these people, and we have to weed out the ones who are actually prepared by the Lord, teach them, teach our current investigators, visit our less active members, and everything else that we have to do in a week.

 That is a cat that always likes to sit under my skirt
 when we eat at this one food ran by hour house. LOL

For the first time our stress isn't about trying to find something to do, but it's that we have TOO MUCH TO DO. President Senior told me a couple weeks ago that if we would keep working hard and being obedient, the Lord would bless us. Well.... he has! Maybe even a little too much!! hahaha OK, we can never have too much work, but MAN WE ARE BUSYYYY. The work here has just EXPLODED. We are just harvesting all day every day!

  Doraemon Sushi

We got 3 new investigators this week. The first one is named My Heart.

Yes.

His name is My Heart.

We got him as a referral foreverrrrr ago! Like, my second week here or something. But, when we contacted him, he was like, "Yeahh I live by the airport, and I'm only free in the evenings, so if we meet there at 7 I can show you where I live." And we were like, "Ehhh...... maybe not."

 Chaengwattana (about 20 minutes from
our house- still in Bangkok)

But then we got him as a referral a SECOND time, so we thought, "Maybe he actually is interested!" So we called him up again and set up a time during the day to go visit him with a member from our branch. She picked us up in her cute little asian minivan. :) haha Anyway, we thought he was kind of older, 'cause the Elders who referred him said he had a wife and kids, and he sounded older on the phone, but when he and his wife/girlfriend/fiance came to show us where to go, he was super young! Like... in his twenties! We were like, "Whoa." Anyway, they took us to not their house..... but his snooker ran? Like, a place where a bunch of mechanics play pool and hang out. ahahhahahhaha Apparently they live in another part of Bangkok, but own the snooker in Don Muang, and spend more than half of their time there. It's interesting.... Anyway, we just sat in a corner of his snooker and ended up talking to him, his wife and his parents! They're all (minus the wife) Christian already, and were interested in going to Church and our English program. So we gave them a Book of Mormon and said we'd meet them at church on Sunday. Turns out, though, that My Heart goes to school in the morning and so they have to go to the other branch. It's weiiird, but we gotta get them to church somehow! Anyway, turns out that he isn't in his 20's he's only 19!!!!We were so shocked. He's like, wayyyy grown up. Anyway.

They all came to church, except for his wife. His dad came!! We were super excited about that. They missed sacrament meeting, so we took them to Sunday School... turns out Pakkret branch doesn't have a gospel principles class so they were talking about some deep doctrine and they were really confused. ahahahha So we decided to not have them stay for 5th Sunday Forum and teach them the restoration instead. They loved it!! After talking about the First Vision, we were like, "Do you think God and Jesus Christ actually appeared to Joseph?" And they were like, "YEAH! Miracles happen!" 

This is me and Scooter.

Ohhh my gosh, we love these people so much. They're like..... soooo romantic. In an Anne of Green Gables kind of way. I mean- they named there son My Heart to begin with. They're Christian, which is a wayyyy weird thing to be in Thailand, and the parents hold hands all the time- which is WAY weird for Thailand, especially for people their age. They are sooooo sweet and willing to learn. We're excited to teach them about the temple, 'cause they're gonna LOVE IT!!!

The only problem teaching them is that it's kind of hard to talk/pray about them with a straight face. "My Heart isn't here!" "Please take care of My Heart." I love it! Best name ever.

This is a hilarious picture of me
and Sis Reedy going home-
a bug flew in her eye and she was trying
to get it out and I was just being annoying.

The other day we stopped by to visit Mali, and I noticed that she has the wimpiest little sign for his sausage stand, so I'm making one for her today. Hahaaha She gave my a very detailed explanation of what she wants. hahahahahah It's so cute! I hope it gets her more business.

So yeah! The work in Don Muang is going great! I'm exhausted all the time. I hit the pillow and I'm out, and then I wake up and say, "It's morning ALREADY??" But I get the strength I need, so it's alllll good.

Yesterday two guys on a motorcycle passed by, the one on the back was resting a giant wooden dinner table on their heads and both were laughing hysterically. Funny enough, I wasn't that surprised by it. 

Love you all! Please send me emails! I'd love to hear from some friends. C:

Love,

Sister Zaugg

One More Week in Thailand

Hellllllooooooooo!!

Per usual, MUCH has happened this week. It was a great week! Even if Sis Reedy and I have both been feeling really sick through it all. I think it was a mixture of icecream and some bad Thai food that we had last Monday. haha

This week we got two new investigators! One of them is a referral from a recent convert in the branch. He's in the army and she's his captain. LOL So cool! Her name is Ammy. She's been buddhist her whole life, but has always wondered why there are so many Christians in the world, so she wants to try it out. We're a little bit confused about her, because she's really willing to learn, but when she came to church yesterday she was sooooo attached to her phone, it was a little ridiculous. She was treating church the way a farang (white person) would treat a Buddhist wad. She was taking pictures of EVERYTHING, including the speakers during sacrament meeting and posting them on facebook. Uhhhhhh Yeah. She was feeling sick, too, so she went home before the 3rd hour.   She seemed to like it, though... just for the wrong reasons. lol Next time we teach her we'll suggest turning the phone off and listening to the spirit next time instead. :)

The next investigator is named Ben. Sis Reedy and Steele found her during the last companion exchanges at a 7/11. Sis Reedy and I gave her a call a week later and she was up to meet with us. We met her at a park near our house. 

A little detour for a second: this park by our house is hilarious. At first glance it looks like a normal kiddy park with colorful play structures and stuff, but REALLY it's like... a geriatric exercise park!! LOL If you look closer the play structures are actually exercise machines in disguise. hahahahaha In the evening a bunch of old people gather there and use the structures, flail around and/or lay about and don't actually do anything. 

Anyyyyyway. So we met up with Ben at the park. She's our age and has a real desire to learn about God and Christ! After we prayed, she was like, "Hey... you like, asked for blessings in your prayer.... can you do that?? Do you ever get them??" ANd we were like, "YEAH!" She's amazed by the fact that God and Christ love everybody and that you can have a personal relationship with them. She's a normal personal with normal person concerns, and she really wants to feel like there's someone who loves her no matter what! She's great.

Ew hasn't progressed much since last week, mainly because she works sooooo much, we only got to meet with her once this week. However, she still really wants to learn. She feels guilt for some things in her past and wants to have a better family life and get help with her financial situation, so she wants to know how God can help her with those things. She prays every day. :) Turns out that the random member that we took with us to help teach her sells across from her so they already knew each other! Perfect! So yeah, we won't get to teach her this week 'cause she has to sell out of town, so she wont make her baptismal date. haha Slowly but surely.

Sis Mali is doing GREAT! We have seen maaaaany miracles with her. First, we taught her tithing and she was super excited about it!! She said she would pay it! A couple days later as we were riding to a less active member's house, I felt like we should go say hi to Mali, so we stopped by her little sausage stand. She was super happy to see us and had us sit down so that she could tell us something important. She said that that day she had been really stressed out and depressed, because she was thinking about her debt and the fact that she wasn't going to have enough money to pay it that day and buy supplies to sell the next day, and that she really wanted to go to church, but her debt was making it impossible for her! She was justing praying her heart out and after she finished her prayer, ten minutes later her younger sister called and asked her how she was doing. She told her about her problems, and later that day her sis came over and gave her 10,000 baht!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's almost all of her debt!!!!!!!!!! WHOA. She was SO happy and astounded. She told us, "God really DOES help us! He saw my faith and blessed me!!" She said that she had already bought 3 new skirts for church that day, 'cause she's never owned one before. :)))))))))))))) 

Wow. What a miracle. I think the thing that astounds me the most is just the truth that God truly does love ALL His children. Like, I didn't even know about Mali until 5 weeks ago, but God did. He's been taking care of her all this time, loving her and preparing her for the Gospel. I can feel His love for her and it's so amazing. Makes me love her even more! Not exactly sure when she'll be baptized, maybe the end of next month, it really just depends on if she can get the last bit of her debt payed off. If she keeps paying her tithing she will. :)

We had another random miracle happen this week, too! One night we were teaching Sis Lek, and we had to go to a meeting 'cause we were going to be late, she offered to let us leave our bikes at her house so we could get there on time. It ended up working out that we had to leave them there over night so we could get home on time, so the next morning we went to pick them up. Well, we got there and went to unlock them, but the combination wouldn't work! Somehow when I was locking the bikes up I changed the combination, and we had noooooo idea what it was!! We spent like, 10 minutes just trying random combinations, but nothing was working!!!!! We were about to give up and call someone when Sis Lek randomly is like, "Hey, isn't there a 6 in it?" And we were like, "What?" And she was like, "Yeah, I think I remember seeing a 6 in it yesterday!" So SIs Reedy just randomly switched one of the numbers to 6, and CLICK! IT UNLOCKED!!!!!! All the numbers were totally random, and she just happened to choose the right one to switch to some random number that Sis Lek thought she remembered seeing. Hahahahhahaha WHAT?!?! We were soooooooo grateful!!! God does take care of His little missionaries. :,) That seems like a small thing, but really, when you think about it, THAT WAS A BIG MIRACLE. How many possible combinations are there for a 4 number lock? A looooooot. Wow. Every time I think about it I just can't even believe it. haha

So those are the big things that happened this week. I'm still a greenie, and I'm awkward 'cause I cant understand any one still and no one understands me. lolll It's hard, too, something I've learned about Thai people in general is that they looooooooove to talk! You ask someone a question and they just launch into this monologue about everything but the question you asked that goes for ages and agesssss. And they never seem to notice that no one is listening either! hahahahah Oh dear.

Sis Reedy and I have started naming all the dogs that live on our street. So far we have Scooter, who is the crazy one. He's my favorite, but I try to keep my distance from him. Most dogs in Thailand are super lazy and just lay around all day, but he's always running around doing stuff, I'm not sure what. Sometimes he gets scared by his tail and just starts wigging out. Sometimes we pass by him and he's sitting with just one hind leg raised for no reason. Yeahh... Then there's King James, who is this dog with a really long dreaded tail. We think he looks kind of regal in a sad stinky dog kind of way. Then there's this short little torpedo of a dog who we just come up with a new Mexican name for him every time we see him. Yesterday he was Francisco.

Yup! This transfer is coming to a close. One more week! Pres Senior called us and asked how we  feel about trios..... euuuuhhhhggggg....... I'm not really sure what's going to happen. :S 

Anyway, the work is really picking up here finally! White washing is such a lam baag (burden) but finally we're starting to get somewhere here! Haha took 5 weeks! But we made it!! Yeahhhh

Love you all!

Sis Zaugg

A few extra pictures...

 Here is a little neighborhood in Don Muang. I thought it looked interesting! I haven't had an opportunity to teach anyone there or do tracting... probably never will. But we pass it sometimes going to visit less active members.

 A drawing I did to help teach a less active family about the 2000 Stripling Warriors and their moms!

Here's the picture of the family. The girls are so cute! They read the scriptures and pray together every day. If only their mom would take them to church!

:)

One month in Thailand!

Wait- what? I've been here for almost a whole month? Sooo much has happened! Wow. I love Thailand!! I'm so grateful for the chance to be here for another 13 months!!

So this week.. Where do I even start?

Happy Birthday to me!! It flooded

I guess we'll start with my birthday! So I turned yisip!!! Crazy thing about it- I will never be 20. I will only be yisip, because everyone who asks me how old I am will ask in Thai! hahahaha Weeeiiird. My birthday was great! It was the day before zone conference so we had interviews with Pres Senior. I really enjoyed having my interview. He helped me feel less worried and stressed out, and helped me see that I'm doing just what the Lord wants me to and to be happy!! He told me to keep working, and the miracles will come. Also, Sis Sahagun, one of my Phii Thais from the MTC is in my district, and she made me chocolate cake. Super fun! Also, all the Elders in my zone found out I'm a gamer so they spent a half hour just quizzing me on my game knowledge. hahah I think I passed. Every one was so thoughtful of me! One of my students at English made a clay rose, one of my investigators gave me donuts! They were all so nice!! Definitely felt the love. I also bought myself a piece of cake, which I thoroughly enjoyed. :)

My mini birthday celebration.

The view from Sis Wiganda's apartment.

So Zone Conference! AWESOME!!! I definitely needed some spiritual nourishment. Learned a lot about desire and diligence. Also found out that we were going on companion exchanges and having a full day of dan jonesing! WHOA. My new companion for the next day and a half was sister Wiganda. Every time I told people that, they would just give me a weird look and say, "Ooooohhhhh...." I was super freaked out!! And then I met her and I understood. She's CRAZY!!!! She's a khon Thai, but she's absolutely nuts. It didn't help that she kept looking at me and saying, "You're going to die." I was a little nervous. haha 

For lunch at zone conference we had subway, ice cream, cereal and chocolate fondue. Weird. But amazing!! After Zone Conference I reluctantly said good bye to Sister Reedy and headed to Srinekarin with Sis Wiganda, Sis Sahagun and Sis Itri. It's a cool area! I like it. They don't ride bikes there, just songthaws and taxis. Anyway. I ended up having a great experience. Sis Wiganda is nuts, but she works hard. We actually didn't have a full day of street contacting, the AP's allowed her to teach that day. We taught 3 lessons to investigators and one to recent converts! It was really nice watching her style of teaching. I got to contribute, too! I think I said relevant things. 

Our random temple display we used to lure people in
 when we had to spend a whole day contacting. haha
Please observe the huge storm that was just about to break
 and Tesco Lotus in the background.

When it came time for street contacting, Sis Itri had the idea to take this giant styrofoam cut out of the SLC temple and take it to the business area of Srinekarin and proselyte there. We somehow fit it onto a song thaw and found a place to set up.

Cool clouds!!

I was pretty scared about this, because I'm terrified of street contacting! I don't know how to talk to people!! Especially when I'm doing it in Thai!! But I prayed for the strength to open my mouth, and even though I wasn't perfect, the Lord placed people in my path to hear my message. I got three phone numbers for the Srinekarin sisters!

I think the biggest thing I learned was that I can have fun AND be a missionary at the same time!! Before I was so stressed and impatient with myself. But being with Sis Wiganda taught me that the Lord wants this to be a happy experience, and I can't be a good missionary if I'm way stressed and unhappy all the time. So I've really changed my view on things, I figure, I'm not going to be perfect RIGHT NOW. But I can be if I take baby steps every day. That way I can be happy and do hard work! 

Sis Reedy and I taking cover in a phone booth,
waiting for a taxi to come in poooouring rain.

Even though I was only gone from Sis Reedy for a day and a half, it felt really weird getting back to Don Muang! haha But we got straight back to work with new goals and attitudes and it's been awesome!!! We stop and talk to more people than before. Instead of relying on our English pass alongs we rely on the ones that have a picture of Christ and our own testimonies. It has been much more fulfilling that way! Yeah, we get rejected way more, but we have met some great people that way too! Like this one family by one of our investigator's house! We met them 'cause one of the little girls came out to feed her fish and Sis Reedy started talking to her, eventually the whole family came out and invited us in. We shared The Family: A Proclamation to the World with them and they said we can come back! Yayyyy

Riding a songthaw in the raiiiiiiin!

Our street floods every other day.

Also, we have a new dater! Her name is Ew! She is the mom of Donut and Cheetoh! One time we were teaching the house lady and she came. I think I talked about this already. Anyway. We taught a lesson at her house, and she was SUPER into it. She really wants to learn about God. She reads all the pamphlets we give her, and she even took the house lady's Book of Mormon and has already ready 17 chapters. In that first lesson we invited her to be baptised and she accepted! Yayy!! June 30th!!

Sis Mali is still struggling to come to church. She has a large debt to pay. We've been really wondering what to do for her. We called Pres Senior and he said, if she has money problems, teach her the law of tithing. It's true! It's weird to think that if you give up money to the Lord, you end up with more money in the long run, but when does the Lord ever weird in forward ways? So we're going to teach that and pray that she will be receptive to it!

Here is a dog just hanging out in the middle of the street....
Just staring.

We have a new investigator named Ran. He's 13 years old. He just walked into church yesterday! He's super sweet and diligent!!

The election is overrrrrrr!!!! FINALLY!!! So happy.

Sister Muk's baptism!!! We love her so much.
 She's gonna be so amazing.

OH! We had a baptism this weekend. Her name is Muk. She was the Elder's investigator. She was pretty worried and nervous, but after the baptism she was so relieved and happy and peaceful. I love her so much!!! All of us Don Muang sisters cried. haha

Also, there is a rockstar in my branch! He has a single out! It's really awesome. When we went to teach Ew his song was playing on the radio. You can look him up on Youtube!

Look up: "Ake Surachet Thailand Tee Ruk"

The food ran we usually eat at

Well, that's kind of it for today! I'm much happier than before, and I've been seeing a lot of miracles already! Hopefully we'll see some more in the near future. 

Love ya!!

Sis Zaugg